Earlier this year, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California sought to take advantage of RFID technology to make the event safer and offer more to customers.

We’ve seen wristbands enhanced with RFID technology numerous time in the past and for different reasons – from warning farm machinery operators if children are in the vicinity to enabling waterpark guests to upload photos to their Facebook profiles. Earlier this year, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California sought to take advantage of the technology to make the event safer and offer more to customers.
The organizers of the festival worked with Intellitix to help boost the security of the festival with an RFID-based control system to replace standard wristbands, which need to be checked by eye and can feasibly be swapped from person to person to allow guests illegal entry.The wristbands, supplied this year by Precision Dynamics, contained the ticket details of each customer, encrypted with a 16-digit ID, and a gate system was set up to allow only one person with one wristband in or out at a time. If the RFID chip was compromised or the system detected an attempt at more than one entry, a red light was displayed and admission rejected. If customers had linked their wristbands to their Facebook account at registration, then once inside they could also tap the bands at stations around the site to update friends both at the festival and at home with details of the stage they were at and the act performing.
The system allowed the festival curators to more closely regulate numbers, enabling them to adhere to site capacity rules and safety laws, while customers also benefitted from reduced gate queue times due to the automated process, as well as social media interactivity. Event organizers: one to get in on?